Can someone give me an example of something I would purchase, fairly cheaply, to be able to boost wireless signals upstairs?
I have a wire going from the main router downstairs to my PC upstairs so can use this to connect both routers.
Or could I get a wireless card, put that in my PC and have it act as a sort of gateway for my phone and laptop?

Your best bet if you have a wired that runs to the area you want better coverage would be to buy whatever wireless router you want that is within your budget and just use as an Accesspoint.

nutshell, to setup any wireless router as accesspoint. Set its lan IP to be on your network and not conflict with any other static IPs like your router. So for example if your router is 192.168.1.1, and your dhcp scope is 192.168.1.100 to 150. Set this new router to 192.168.1.2. Turn off its dhcp server, and then connect to your existing network via one of its lan ports. Shazam instant AP.

Set its wireless how you want - if you set to same SSID and security then you can roam between without any issues.

I bought one of these, and put DD-WRT on it, and used it as an accesspoint to boost signal. Less than £20 delivered.

As budman said...Set this up with a static IP address outside of your DHCP scope.Turn off DHCP.Connect it to your current routers LAN port, via one of its own LAN ports (NOT WAN)Set SSID to same as your current router.

Just realised I have an old Netgear 834GT router which might work alright.
If I connect it to my PC, will 192.168.0.1 still work even though it won't be internet connected straight away? Sorry I'm not great at Network things.

Not sure I get the point of this? Do you mean when you connect it to your PC to set it up as an AP?? Does not matter what IP it was or will be. If its dhcp server is off, then sure you would have to set your PC to be static on its network to be able to get to it to set it up.

Does not even matter if its lan IP is even on your existing networks IP range to be honest -- just makes it kind of hard to access to configure the wireless though when its not

"old Netgear 834GT"

Yeah that would work - like I said ANY WIRELESS ROUTER, and when I said ANY - I meant ANY Can be used as just an accesspoint. Wireless router is just that, a AP with routing features added, and switch vs just 1 lan port. So sure you can use just the AP functionality if that is all you need.

Sorry to bump this but I'm back on the case of getting a better wireless range.

I haven't sorted the router to be the best as yet (I think the laptop I have won't see 5Ghz) as I need to check the channels too.

My set up is the router/modem is downstairs. I have a wire connecting the PC upstairs, which I would prefer even though I do have a wireless usb stick.

I'm thinking I could get something like this and use the wire that connects my PC so the router and this extender are connected physically. The problem would be connecting my PC to it as there is only one cat5 connector.

The other alternative is something like this The reviews seem a bit split and if it doesn't work, I can just send it back. 150m would be by far enough to extend into the garden which is the main driver for all this. Plus, I can simply turn it off when not in use to save on electric.

Still might try the old wireless router but the above plus does seem a lot more simple for my needs.

You could try setting up wireless repeaters. There's a few videos on YouTube that will show you how to set it all up. The basic premise is that your router sends the signal to another router and that router sends out the signal.

It has 4 LAN ports, so you can connect the CAT5 cable which is running from your main router, and also connect your PC so it remains wired.

Very simple to configure the Access point as has already been mentioned above, but if you give us specifics on your setup, we will run through step by step.

Things we will need:-

IP of your router eg 192.168.1.1

DHCP Scope (ie what addresses are given out by your router) eg 192.168.1.100 - 192.168.1.200

Sorry, I didn't see it before

If I set the DHCP outside of the addresses given by the router, will it still be recognised?

I'll give it a whirl anyway. Even if the wireless doesn't work well in the garden, at least upstairs it'll be a lot stronger. Saying that, I wonder if there is a way I could stick an antenna outside which could act as a boost...

Plus, I am sure a friend of mine has a special plug which he plugs cat5 cables into, then has a plug in another room with an ariel on it to boost the signal in there. I didn't know power cables could be used?